place most days. Instead of in her bed, he’d be working on the apartment. Depending on what else he had on his plate, he got more or less done each day. Though when she showed up, the work was usually forgotten about for a while.
Inevitably, he was called away at some point or had some duty to take care of. Faye was still living in his apartment with the kids. The rest of the Maddox family didn’t know that yet, though there had been more than a few close calls and questions were being raised.
Some days, Poppy would call Charley and they’d go out for dinner or she’d be invited to eat at the Maddox house. It felt odd going over there knowing the only surviving male member of the family in such an intimate way. Yet, she’d never had to actually spend any time with Turner there, so that gave her a reprieve. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to hide her thoughts in front of the family when he was around. Whenever Turner was around, her thoughts were always inappropriate.
Getting to know Val was great. Poppy tried to make a point of not being alone with the matriarch; that way she didn’t bring up Turner, not in the way she had before. Zoey, Willow, and Autumn were incredible young women who Poppy was happy to know. Her family weren’t anything like the close-knit, do-or-die Maddoxes, so it was nice to learn there was another way to do things when it came to raising children and keeping home.
On that Thursday, eleven days after they started having sex—not that she was counting—Poppy was off work. She’d be off Friday too and then in a regular old nine to five Saturday through Wednesday. Working shifts was taking a lot out of her. The schedule was insane. It made planning any kind of life next to impossible.
For once she and Turner got to spend something resembling a night together. It had been after eight AM by the time an owner of one of the buildings he managed called him to demand his attention about something. It frustrated her, but she didn’t say anything.
Of the twelve buildings he managed, he dealt with five different owners and an innumerable number of tenants. One of the buildings only had four units, so it wasn’t like they were all skyscrapers or anything, though another had sixty-three units. The others varied between those two brackets.
Since they’d started being intimate, he talked to her about his work more often. She enjoyed being an ear for him to vent to, even if she couldn’t do anything about the issues. Poppy wanted more than anything to give her opinion, to offer suggestions or even request he give up some of the overwhelming responsibility, but she didn’t. Her role was to be an outlet, whether spoken or sexual, she wasn’t to be his girlfriend or act like they were ever going to build a life or have a future.
Those were the parameters that she set for herself. Part of her feared what might happen if she spoke up. If he walked away from their arrangement, she’d have a lot more to find than a new place to live. She’d need to build herself a new heart, and that was no easy feat for anyone.
The most important rule she set herself was to never, ever let him see just how much she felt for him. Every day those feelings grew. Hiding them from him was vital, but she couldn’t hide them from herself. When she relaxed, often at work, her mind would wander and speculate on what their life together could’ve been. It was insane just how much ambition she had for them, what she believed they could’ve been capable of, especially when her vow to him was to be frivolous and uncomplicated.
In her apartment, that was beginning to feel more and more like hers every day, Poppy was almost ready for the day ahead. Charley wanted to talk to her about something, so she’d agreed to go over to the Maddox house that afternoon. Her friend had sort of implied they’d come back into the city for drinks later, so Poppy planned to do some shopping that morning to get a new dress, maybe even splurge on some new shoes, if she could find something at the lower end of the price spectrum.
Going out of her apartment, she locked the door and dropped her key into an inside pocket of the